It's not retirement time for AMD's 45 nm "Regor" silicon just yet, with the company announcing the Athlon II X2 280 value dual-core processor. Built in the socket AM3 package (compatible with AM2/AM2+/AM3/AM3+ motherboards), and based on the company's K10.5 micro-architecture, the chip features two x86-64 cores clocked at 3.60 GHz, 1 MB of L2 cache per core (2 MB total), an instruction set that includes SSE3 and SSE4A, and a dual-channel integrated memory controller that supports both DDR2 and DDR3 memory types. The chip can take advantage of HyperTransport 3.0 interface, with a maximum data-rate of 4.0 GT/s. It features a rated TDP of 65W, and is designed for entry-level desktops. It is priced at US $49.99.

Awesome price for a no-shit CPU. Bog standard cheap ass dual core, decent tdp as well. I can see these selling in environments like schools who are on tight budgets and still need to phase out their old pent 4's, of which I know there are many! Hell id buy one for the media streaming pc for my parents, but I already have a spare 8350 for that

pretty much app phenom II x2's were quad core unlockable, my friend had several before going Intel i5 and every single one unlocked. They're just quad cores that failed tests anyway.

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Some PII X2's were locked down quads that worked 100% fine and were justed locked to X2 to hit market demand/price points. A lot of 555's were like that- mine ran perfectly as a quad (overclocked to 3.6 as an X4 w/o a voltage bump )

Wondering if these may be X4 Athlons that are locked down for the same reason (i.e. price points/demand). AMD sometimes gets a little loose with their core naming so I would not be surprised at all if this is the case...